Biden Digs In

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Jon Favreau
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

Speaker A
I'm Jon Lovett.

Jon Lovett
I'm Tommy Vitor.

Jon Favreau
Happy fourth and welcome back.

Speaker A
We're back.

Jon Favreau
You guys managed to unplug for the holiday weekend. Stop thinking about politics.

Speaker A
I know you're joking. I really did try. I really didn't try. No. I see every once in a while I go into the box of screams and I'm like, there you are with your megaphone screaming with everybody else screaming, with a bunch of blue check marks, calling us traitors in funny fonts.

Good stuff. Good stuff out there on Elon's Internet.

Jon Lovett
Yeah, real time.

Jon Favreau
Tommy, what about you?

Jon Lovett
Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Jon Favreau
No, I will say I was not too offline while I was in Maine. For the week. But it was a nice place to be staring at my phone the whole time. That's what I thought. And I did, as Emily likes to say, my in laws live there, all their friends, and she's like, you've basically done the pod a couple times a day for everyone here in Biddeford pool because it's all anyone could talk about. I don't know if you guys got this everywhere. I've never, we've been worried for a long time about attention on this race. People's attention is now focused on this race.

Jon Lovett
Oh, yeah. Big time.

Jon Favreau
In a way that I have not seen in a long time.

Speaker A
And look, we'll get to some of our critiques and we have a few. But in fair, yeah, I wish it.

Jon Favreau
Was in other circumstances, for sure.

Speaker A
In fairness, the Biden strategy of using the debate to draw more attention to the race has succeeded.

Jon Favreau
That's, yeah, it absolutely worked. Check Mark. Check mark on that one.

So it's been almost a week since our last episode, so we got a lot to catch up on. On Friday, Joe Biden sat for a taped 20 Minutes interview with George Stephanopoulos in an effort to dispel concerns about his age and fitness, explain why the debate went so wrong, and reiterate that he isn't dropping out. We'll talk about how well he did in a bit. The president then did a few fiery campaign events over the weekend in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where he focused his attacks on Trump and the people urging him to step aside. He doubled down Monday morning when he responded to the small but growing group of Democrats in Congress who've called on him to drop out with a letter to all House and Senate Democrats that said, while Biden's, quote, not blind to the concerns people are raising, he's still the best person to be. Trump has, quote, rock solid support from the base and elected democrats, and that bowing out of the race would overturn the will of the primary voters who chose him overwhelmingly over the course of the spring. He then called into Morning Joe, as one does, to hit the same themes and belittle the people calling for him to go. Biden does not have plans to campaign this week because he's hosting the NATO summit in Washington, including a Thursday press conference where he's going to get asked about all of this yet again. And then I believe he's going to have some campaign events this weekend. So love it. You're going to be talking later in the show to Congressman Ro Khanna of California, who is a key Biden supporter and liaison to the progressive community about where things stand on the hill now that a few more dems have come out with statements of support for Biden.

Just before recording. There's others who are no one. There's Adam Smith, I believe, called on him to step down today, Monday afternoon. And then some senators now are saying, like, hey, this is serious. We need to figure out who's going to beat Trump. And so we're not going to say more, but let's just have this conversation.

Jon Lovett
They want to meet in person. The senators are all like, we're now finally in Washington. We want to get together and talk.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. And so Lovett's gonna talk to Rokhanna all about that in a bit. But let's start with the Stephanopoulos interview from Friday, especially since more than 8 million people watched it live, which is far more than any of the other events Biden has done since the debate. If you haven't seen the interview, here's some of what you missed.

Speaker A
Did you ever watch the debate afterwards?

Joe Biden
I don't think I did, no.

Speaker A
Well, what I'm trying, what I want to get at is what were you experiencing as you were going through the debate? Did you know how badly it was going?

Joe Biden
Yeah. Look, the whole way I prepared nobody's fault, mine, nobody's fault but mine.

I prepared what I usually would do, sitting down as I did come back with foreign leaders or National Security Council for explicit detail.

And I realized about partway through that, you know, although I get quoted, the New York Times had me down at ten points before the debate, nine now, or whatever the hell it is, the fact of the matter is that what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times. I couldn't. I mean, the way the debate ran, not my fault, nobody else's fault. No one else is.

Speaker A
And if you stay in and Trump is elected and everything you're warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?

Joe Biden
I feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do. That's what this is about.

Look, George, think of it this way.

You've heard me say this before. I think the United States and the world is an inflection point.

The things that happen in the next several years are going to determine what the next six, seven decades look like and who's going to be able to hold NATO together like me, who's going to be able to be in a position where I'm able to keep the Pacific basin in a position where we're at least checkmate in China. Now who's going to do that? Who has that reach? Who has, who knows all these we're going to have. I guess a good way to judge me is you're going to have now the NATO conference here in the United States next week.

Jon Favreau
Come.

Speaker A
Listen, I didn't realize we were on the verge of checkmate against China. That's huge.

Jon Lovett
Yeah, knock that queen over.

Jon Favreau
Reaching that key Pacific basin voter constituency.

Jon Lovett
It's Joe Biden calling for Lovetta.

Speaker A
It's after six. I don't think so. It's after six.

Jon Lovett
Is he with Micah?

Speaker A
Can you hear mine?

Jon Favreau
Let's try that again.

Speaker A
I think we should leave that in.

Great.

Jon Favreau
Okay, so what'd you guys think of the interview? And how are you feeling in general since you guys and Dan talked last week? Excellent pod. It was great to just be a listener.

Jon Lovett
You basically produced it. Cause you were sending so many goddamn clips to this.

Jon Favreau
I was, I was. That's true. Well, you know what? You did a great job. Tommy, why don't you kick us off?

Jon Lovett
I thought it was bad and at times very hard to watch. And in fairness to Biden, I don't think that that interview could have solved the political problem that stemmed from the debate. It could have stopped the bleeding for me. It made me more concerned. And here's the reason why. Every time I've seen President Biden speak off a teleprompter recently, he has struggled to communicate clearly. And I don't mean it's a bad message, I mean, like, struggle to speak in a clear, coherent way.

The sentences run together, they're hard to understand. And I think we just heard it in that clip. All of us were wincing. It was hard to listen to. And that is separate, apart from my concerns about the message itself, which is Biden just mostly being very defensive about his record and not like, articulating a second term agenda that is compelling and makes me want to vote for him over Donald Trump if I'm a swing voter. But the explanations for why the interview, why the debate went badly, range from having a cold to jet lag, even though he'd been back for twelve days, to blaming debate prep. But I just don't think any of those answers fully explain how bad the debate was. And so, I don't know, it was hard to watch. The cut shots are not kind to him. He's consistently misstating polling data about himself. I don't know, I came away very concerned.

Jon Favreau
Love it.

Speaker A
Yes. So the interview itself, before he's even taken a question.

I think it was a hard setting for him to succeed, even at his absolute best, because it's hard to justify why it was more than a week after the debate that it was so brief and he was only doing one. That's the first problem. The second problem is the debate wasn't just a bad night. We all saw it. And it is, barring an explanation, which he keeps denying, he keeps denying outs. Right? Like that he was very sick or that he has some condition that has been repaired, whatever. The explanations are kind of vague and they're about having a cold or having been jet lagged or having been run down. But that doesn't do enough to assuage our concerns about what we saw that night. Right.

The explanations don't offer anything. But even with those caveats there about why his job is so difficult, if you were going to raise the stakes on one interview, it can't be another example of you being hard to understand. Not because he's soft, not because he's mumbly, but because his train of thought doesn't make sense. And so you've now told us that he's up for this job. Everyone's saying, why isn't he out there? Why isn't he out there? Why isn't he out there? He goes out there and he offers this mid link performance, and it ends up being the absolute worst of both worlds. Because he's right. Right. The stakes are incredibly high. Trump is an incredible threat. But either he will prosecute that case or someone else will. And right now we get neither.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, I heard some people say that it was more coherent than the debate. I do agree with that. I thought he looked better than the debate. I thought he sounded a bit more coherent than the debate, for sure. But I came away thinking, all right, they had a week. Sorry, it took a week to do another sort of live fire event like this. Right, where it wasn't a. He gave a couple, he did a couple rallies that weekend as well, or he had just done a rally in Wisconsin and energetic, just like the North Carolina rally on a teleprompter. Okay, but they've had a week to prepare for this interview.

And even if you go through the transcript. Right. Because some people were like, well, the sound was off, and maybe there's a lot of conspiracy theories out there, maybe ABC was fixing the sound and this, forget it. So you just read the transcript and say you do them a favor by cleaning up all the garbles and all the syntax issues in the transcript.

You are left with what is his message? And of course, it's difficult to deliver a message when I, George Stephanopoulopoulos, is asking you multiple times, well, are you okay to serve? Do you feel like you're cognitively okay? Right. But as you're preparing for that interview, you would think that your staff, and I'm sure they did, would say, okay. So you say, I had a bad night.

I know why people are concerned. I'd be concerned if I saw that and I blew a big opportunity. For sure. You know what? I feel okay. I'm going to prove in the next several weeks just how energized I am and how important I see this race. And I'm going to make the case everywhere I go. And this is the case. And then you just keep pivoting back to that. But, like, that didn't happen. And I do think that, like, as we were saying, he's back to a defense of his record, which at times before we criticize for being a defense of, like, all the economic accomplishments when people weren't sort of feeling the recovery. That would have been better than talking about Aukus.

Jon Lovett
Careful.

Jon Favreau
I know, Tommy, I'm sorry, but even the world, though, I'd love to hear what the world is talking about. Aukus talking about the Pacific bend, NATO. And I'm just like, what? I don't, I just, the urgency was not there and it made me really worried that he's going to be able to prosecute the case going forward and make up for the debate. Because guess what? He was behind before the debate and now he's still behind by more. Whatever you think about the polling, even his own internal polling has been behind right now. So the question is, what are you going to do to win over, say you don't lose any voters. Say you don't lose any Biden 2020 voters from the debate, you're still behind. What are you going to do to win over voters who were undecided between Biden and Trump? When you have that message with George Stephanopoulos?

Jon Lovett
Yeah, I mean, we went from NATO to Aukus to getting the Japanese to spend more, I assume on defense was the context of, to level set. In July of 2020, Joe Biden was up nine points in the polling average of national polls. In July of 2023, Trump is up three points. So that's a huge swing. If you look under the hood, it gets worse. 70% of the electorate, if not more, thinks Biden is too old. His disapproval rating is 57% in the fivethirtyeight average. There's an Emerson swing state poll that came out today that has Biden down in every single swing state. And CNN found that 75% of voters think that someone else would do better and more likely to win. So for Joe Biden, the question of whether I should step aside is a very difficult one. No doubt. But if you were stripped away the names and the emotion and just kind of looked at it based on the data, it seems like a very clear cut choice that we'd have a better chance with someone else. But, like, his perspective here seems to be that I'm only going to listen to the almighty.

Jon Favreau
Well, Tommy, also, the campaign was touting the set of Bloomberg morning consult swing state polls that also came over to the weekend that showed Biden doing better than their last set of polls. And, you know, they're tweeting them with, like, there goes the narrative. And this is just Twitter being Twitter again. And look at how great Joe Biden's doing. It's a set of polls that have him losing to Donald Trump by two, down seven in Pennsylvania, seven in Pennsylvania, and 55% of voters in the swing states saying that he should step aside. And that's the poll that the campaign is saying, proves that he's like on the rebound.

Speaker A
It's like, so, you know, he's not delivering the message effectively.

If you actually watch that first answer that you played, what you kind of see is, oh, like I see what he's pulling from. Right? Like I see there was some argument about how his polling wasn't that impacted that the times has him down now, but had him down before and he lied this many times. Here's what he lied about. What you see in that interview is actually a campaign that's being let down by the candidate. Right? Like, that's what this is about. This is a campaign that is being in a White House, that is being let down by their principal over and over and over again. I would be very comfortable having a conversation about, like, how are the polls moving? Is it not as bad as it looks? If the Joe Biden we were seeing was more like the Joe Biden we were seeing at the State of the union or even a slightly worse version of that, but the Joe Biden we have seen in the past couple of outings, other than when he's on teleprompter and even there, he's not. He's, I mean, better than this. Like, that George Stefanopoulos interview was painful to watch. As time we were sitting here listening to the clip, I actually was thinking, oh, should we cut this down so people don't turn off the podcast. It is ridiculous.

Jon Favreau
I know. And I read, again, it is ridiculous.

Speaker A
That we were talking about this interview in a serious, like, it was a terrible interview. He did a terrible job articulating why he's in the race, what happened at the bait, and why he's the person to beat Trump. He's doing a terrible job.

Jon Favreau
I know. And I read it. I read the transcript on the plane home last night. Cause I was just like, again, I'm just gonna try to read the transcript. Like, put the. Cause, you know, his voice sounds whatever. And it just. It did not make much sense. And like, to your point about the campaign, the campaign knows what they have to do. They know the case they have to prosecute. And the message that works, you can tell from their Twitter accounts, from their press releases, and all those tv ads targets their ads, right? Yeah. They're, you know, over the weekend, they've been talking a lot about Project 2025. We're gonna get to that in a bit. And there were a lot of people complaining. Why aren't we talking about Project 2025 more? Why isn't the. Why isn't the media covering Project 2025? Joe Biden, in front of an audience of 50 million Americans at a debate, did not once mention Project 2025. Then an audience in front of 8 million people with George Stephanopoulos did not mention Project 2025. The campaign knows that what Joe Biden has to do and what they have to do is talk about what Donald Trump means for the next four years and the danger that he represents, and then what Joe Biden will do and fight for the next four years. You didn't get any of that from any of his appearances. What you get is he calls Donald Trump a liar, which every poll shows. A vast majority of Americans already believe Donald Trump is a liar, and he's still ahead in those polls. You get that Joe Biden did something amazing on the economy, which we've already said most voters do not believe.

And so you got to prosecute that case better. And then Joe Biden kept NATO together, which no voters fucking care about. I'm sorry. Or at least not the critical voters you need to win.

Speaker A
Well, the problem with all of this is some 70% of people believe Joe Biden is too old.

Donald Trump is only getting between 45 and 50% of the vote. Right. What does that tell you? That means there's a sizable group of people out there that right now believe Joe Biden is too old. But they're still gonna vote for him, right? There's a lot. And that tells you something like, Donald Trump is baked. People know who he is. They're looking for reassurance about whether or not Joe Biden can do the job. And Joe Biden is not right now at all able to persuade people that he's up to do the job. His outings are and a campaign rally, I would say, fine, like, maybe assuage some people. But his interviews, his off the cuff conversations, the videos that are circulating online are damning.

Jon Favreau
And he's got those people. You know, I mean, a lot of people are like, well, I think he's old, and I thought the debate was awful, but I'm still voting for him. It's like, yeah, no, he's gonna get 90 something percent of voters who he got before, like us, who were like, very worried. But if it's Joe Biden, Donald Trump, they're gonna pick Joe Biden. That's not the race now, though, right?

Jon Lovett
That's why the focus on how little or how much the horse race number moved is kind of silly. Cause it's a polarized country. And the more concerning numbers are under the hood are the questions about age and fitness to do the job.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. So that interview happens Friday. Over the weekend, a bunch of news stories hit about Biden's age and health and potential decline over the last year. Olivia Nuzzi did extensive reporting in New York magazine. It was titled the Conspiracy of Silence to protect Joe Biden. The president's mental decline was like a dark family secret for many elite supporters. The New York Times interviewed a current senior White House official who said they worked with Biden during his presidency, vice presidency and 2020 campaign, but now believe Biden should not seek reelection. And the quote is the official who insisted on anonymity in order to continue serving said Mister Biden had steadily showed more signs of his age in recent months, including speaking more slowly, haltingly, and quietly, as well as appearing more fatigued in private, small group of people that could be that worked with him as vice president, 2020 campaign, and then now senior officials currently serving in the White House. Then just before we started recording, we got quite a story from the Times about how a Parkinson's disease specialist from Walter Reed Medical center visited the White House eight times from last July to this past March, which is the end date for that batch of visitor logs. All visitor logs in the White House are made public. So if you visit the White House, your name is on the visitor log. White House spokesman Andrew Bates responded, quote, a wide variety of specialists from the Walter Reed system visit the White House complex to treat the thousands of military personnel who work on the grounds, and that Biden has only seen a neurologist once a year as part of his annual checkup, and that those exams have, quote, found no signs of Parkinson's and he is not being treated for it.

There was a medical report released in February from the president's last exam that does say that about Parkinson's and other neurological conditions. It is worth noting, though, that the statement did not flatly say that these visits were unrelated to Biden and his care. And White House press secretary Corinne Jean Pierre refused to answer that question during the White House briefing. She cited unspecified security concerns as to why she couldn't get into it.

Jon Lovett
In privacy. Yeah.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, and privacy. So that's a lot.

What did you guys make of the Olivia Nuzzi story and the Times interview with the senior White House official? Let's start there, and then we can move on to the others. The Parkinson story, I mean, I think.

Jon Lovett
Big picture, I sort of found the kind of voicey first person reporting less compelling than, like, this anonymous official quoted in the Times who worked with Joe Biden over the years and said that he shouldn't seek reelection. I mean, I think that is very damning. I think the problem, the challenge for the Biden campaign to push back on quotes like that is that they are backstopped by the fact that Joe Biden hasn't really been campaigning. Right. We had this, this rough debate on. When was it? A week ago now, week plus. And his schedule has been relatively light. So I don't know. And then we should get into this Parkinson's story because it consumed the White House briefing today.

Speaker A
Yeah. So the problem, like, I'm just being very cynical about this, and it's like, okay, there's like a feeding frenzy right now, right? There are people that have, there are reporters going to people that work there trying to get whatever they can. How old does he seem? Does he seem too old? And people are speaking in a way they maybe weren't speaking before. It is hard to tell in these stories the difference between, wow, Biden is really showing his age. He is slower, more lethargic, but still copas mentus, still up to the task of doing the most important parts of his job and stories that are insinuating something worse.

And I think part of it is that if you're somebody interacting with Joe Biden once in a while, you're saying, oh, that was, he's older than I expected. But is that him on his best day. Is that him on his worst day? We went to the White House before the correspondence dinner.

Jon Favreau
And I thought of this story, reading Olivia's piece, because Olivia ends with her seeing Biden the night of the correspondence dinner and feeling like, oh, gosh. I mean, she describes it in much more vivid detail. But we saw him the night before.

Speaker A
Yeah. And the experience of seeing him was, oh, wow, he is. He's slower. His speech was halting.

He kind of gave remarks that were a little bit like, I think there was one point where he kind of went back to an anecdote, kind of did it twice. And you kind of, you see people that, you know, like, oh, you know, he just got back from, I think it was either the g seven or Ukraine. He'd just been on a long flight. It's a Friday evening. The president has a. Every Friday evening is an evening in which the president is exhausted, and you're.

Jon Lovett
Like, okay, giving remarks. Some random group of people. He doesn't even know why he's there.

Speaker A
Does he know why? That's not criticism by.

Jon Favreau
That's every president confusing. I don't know who the group was. It was, like, us, some influencers, some other people. It was a weird mix of people. So I'm sure when Joe Biden comes down and has to give, like, 15 minutes marks, he's like, who the fuck am I talking to right now?

Speaker A
Right? And so you're in there, and you're.

Jon Favreau
Like, obama would have felt the same thing, of course.

Speaker A
And so you see this, and you're like, I don't know. Like, that was pretty bad. But what is this event? He's probably exhausted. You chalk it up to that.

Jon Favreau
We were saying to each other, like, hey, maybe there's, like, is there a national security thing going on? Like, he seems. I remember that was the first moment that I was like, wow, he really seems. It doesn't seem great.

I had seen him. I've told this before, but I had seen him in December of 22 when my whole family was at the White House. He brought us up to the oval. He was incredibly kind. He recognized Emily's mom from meeting her in 2018.

Speaker A
That's because she's so hot.

Jon Favreau
Marnie's gonna. She's gonna listen.

Jon Lovett
Yeah, she's gonna listen.

Jon Favreau
And he recognized her, and he was, like, telling details of the Bork nomination fight to my father in law as a federal judge. And it was, you know, we left being like, that's Joe Biden tells a lot of stories, a lot of details. Long winded. But, like, seemed, I was like, you know what people call him? He's with it. He's with it. The night before the correspondent's dinner, I was nervous then. I remember going home and then watching the correspondent's dinner night on tv and seeing him there. And I wasn't nervous. Cause I was like, oh, well, he seems better, right? The same thing happened when we all went, all three of us went to the fundraiser in LA that talked about a lot. And he looked, it was really bad. It was like debate style bad. And I remember thinking after that, like, well, the debate's in a week. Either he'll do great in the debate and we'll all be like, well, you know what? He was tired from doing two trips to Europe, and that's why he was bad at the fundraiser. Or he'll be like, this is the debate, and then everyone will be talking about it. And here we are.

Speaker A
Yeah.

Jon Lovett
I mean, just, we all walked out of that fundraiser here in LA, and we're talking to each other and to people around us who are, you know, in politics. And we're like, that was chilling. It was very, very, very unnerving.

Jon Favreau
And especially, like, we follow this all the time. Emily and Hannah were there and they do not follow it all the time, and they do not see Joe Biden all the time. And they, more than us even, were like, what was that? And now look, the reason I think, I want to, it's important, I think, to tell these stories is because there is a growing narrative, too, that there's been this, like, cover up by everyone who's ever talked to Joe Biden or like, everyone who is a Biden supporter. And I think it is, as you pointed out, Lovett, it's difficult when you see someone once in a while where you're like, is it showing signs of age? Is it just like a president's job is really brutal and they're traveling all the time and sometimes they're just off. And like Obama, when he was tired, his remarks would be terrible. Like, this happens all the time. And so you just don't, you don't know. It's more of a gradual thing, I think.

Speaker A
Well, I think that's part of the issue here. And I think part of why even his ability to explain it in these interviews is so difficult and why I think some of these stories are not dishonest but are also a bit over torqued in terms of, like, a conspiracy of silence. If Joe Biden we were seeing in the last couple of weeks was the Joe Biden. We were debating whether or not to nominate or whether there should be a challenger. I think that conversation would have been different.

The facts have changed. The information has changed. Do I know how much, how often these kinds of moments where he seems like he's lost a step to the point where you worry about him being the candidate. Do I know that these weren't happening frequently in the past? I don't. But my sense of just watching this is everyone collectively has been watching a slow decline that came into stark relief when we saw him at the debate. That put other moments where we saw him in better context. That doesn't mean the reason I think we didn't sort of say, oh, we have to talk about a new nominee after we see him with Julia Roberts and George Clooney is because think, I don't know, maybe he's having a bad day. We'll see him at the debate. Right. Like, you don't know what his best and his worst is. You don't know what his comedian is.

Jon Lovett
Well, in the La one, he'd specifically gotten off of a plane from, I think, the G seven that day. So everyone's like, oh, he was exhausted.

Speaker A
Same thing we said after the White House thing.

Jon Lovett
This is why the White House is in such a terrible spot, is because where before you might have gotten some grace in moments like that. Now everyone is looking for the conspiracy because some reporters feel misled. They feel like the White House came down too hard on the Wall Street Journal story from a couple weeks back about his age. And I guess the Olivia Nuzzi piece was, like, emotional and well written, as all her things are. But I thought, like, she made a lot out of, for example, Jill Biden giving her a look without having really any idea why Jill Biden was giving her that look. But, like now, the White House briefing today was consumed top to bottom with questions about why a doctor who specializes in Parkinson's research visited the White House eight times. And there's just no way for that to be a good thing for the White House. I mean, poor Corinne Jean Pierre was up there for 45 minutes trying to deflect questions. They said they wouldn't comment on why the doctor was there, privacy issues or something or security. It's just, it's not gonna stop the questions. And, I mean, I went back and I rewatched the ABC interview. It seemed like there. Biden said he had not gotten a cognitive test. Karine Jean Pierre today said he'd gotten one every year. It seems like there's some inconsistency here in the story that's being told, or at least imprecision.

Jon Favreau
Well, yeah, I was gonna say I couldn't tell if it's the difference between a neurological exam and a cognitive test, which I believe are two different things. But it is hard to, again, because Biden is not necessarily clear in his comments. And then also, you know, there are, of course, there are privacy concerns here and there when a doctor visits, and you don't want to start, but, like, at this point, it's going to be, like you said, it's going to be very hard to just keep saying, we have a report, medical report from February, and that's it. And that's all we're doing. It's just, it's a hard thing to do.

Speaker A
Well, I watched that entire briefing, and actually, it was actually kind of very difficult to understand what. The name isn't a public log. The question is, did this person see the president? And then the answer is, oh, there are privacy concerns because this doctor could see other people at the White House, and maybe there's a way I'm not understanding it. I also don't put it on the press secretary because this feels like an incredibly impossible position that Joe Biden has put everyone around him in. But the issue here is those questions won't stop. Because, first of all, it's wild to me that Joe Biden isn't doing everything he can. You know, he's writing letters to members of Congress about how the stakes are total. He's telling, morning, Joe. The stakes are the stakes, the stakes. Joe Biden, we can't let down. So the stakes, the stakes, the stakes. But then, okay, well, then get out there more, right? Like, nobody would give a shit about when his last neurological assessment was if he had spent three days mixing it up with reporters, shaking hands with voters, talking to journalists, being the Joe Biden of three or four years ago, who would certainly be doing that right now. So he can't, he's not out there. He's saying, oh, the cognitive test is me being out there, but he's not out there. They're getting these confusing answers about what tests he is getting. It is as if their response is designed to continue this morass. Like, to keep us trapped in it.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. No, I mean, it's tough, and I get it. Like, say they have nothing to hide on this. Right.

The reason they're probably avoiding answering more questions, aside from whatever real privacy and health concerns there are and guidelines, rules there are, is like, if they say, sure, he'll take another test. Then it's like they're thinking. Then we lose more news cycles, focusing, waiting.

Jon Lovett
You're giving an inch, they won't give an inch.

Jon Favreau
They don't want to give an inch. That's exactly right.

Jon Lovett
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Jon Favreau
This show is sponsored by Betterhelp. Do you tend to compare your life to others? Does social media play a part in that?

Jon Lovett
It does.

Jon Favreau
What do you do when you get caught up wishing your life looked like someone else's?

Jon Lovett
You know what? That's not my problem.

I don't get the like, envy. But you know what I do? Do? I decide to use social media. I weigh in on things that suck and then terrible people criticize you. And you could tell yourself it doesn't matter, but it actually does bother you.

Jon Favreau
Which is why I do let strangers get me mad.

Jon Lovett
I've just started deleting tweets. Cause I'm like, you know what? I just. I don't care. I don't need to let someone attack me all day long for no reason.

Jon Favreau
You wanna talk about it a little more?

Jon Lovett
I think this should go deeper, which is why betterhelp is a sponsor of this show.

Jon Favreau
Tommy Tommy comparison is the thief of joy.

Jon Lovett
It is.

Jon Favreau
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Jon Lovett
John, you can cut others down or you can lift yourself up.

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Jon Favreau
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From a campaign perspective, the Biden strategy seems to be punching back hard at critics who want him to step aside and making appearances with his strongest supporters. He spoke at a black church in Philadelphia this weekend and did events with John Fetterman and Governor Josh Shapiro. Biden's also trying to rally support among older black Democrats, consistently his best demographic group in all the polling. Jonathan Martin reported in Politico this morning that he's counting on his relationships with unions and the black political establishment to be a kind of firewall against calls for him to drop out. J Mart reports that Congresswoman Maxine Waters told a gathering of black voters in New Orleans over the weekend that the nominee will be Joe Biden, full stop. And that she told other congressional black caucus members, particularly the younger ones, in a Friday conference call that they need to get in line behind Biden. Today, the CBC chairman, Congressman Steve Horsford, was one of the members issuing statements of support for Biden. As we mentioned, Biden also sent that letter to all congressional Democrats and then took a page out of the Trump calling into Fox and Friends playbook by calling into his favorite morning show, Morning Joe. Let's listen to how that went.

Joe Biden
We're not going anywhere. I am not going anywhere. I wouldn't be running if I didn't absolutely believe that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024.

Ro Khanna
Who else do you think could step.

Joe Biden
In here and do this? I expanded NATO.

I solidified NATO. Ask your brother about it. Remember all this talk about how I don't have the black support? Come on, give me a break. Come with me.

Speaker A
Watch.

Jon Favreau
Watch.

Joe Biden
I'm getting so frustrated by the elites now. I'm not talking about you guys, but by the elites in the party who they know so much more said, well.

Ro Khanna
As long as I did the best.

Jon Favreau
I could do, that's the most important.

Ro Khanna
Thing that's caused Democrats concerned who believe.

Joe Biden
That losing is not an option.

Ro Khanna
What would you say to those who are concerned by that answer?

Joe Biden
It's not an option. And I've not lost. I haven't lost. I beat him last time, I'll beat him this time. But any of these guys don't think I should run against me. Go ahead, announce the president. Challenge me at the convention.

Speaker A
I thought AI Joe Biden did a great job in that.

I think whoever was on those buttons, like the zoo 100 did a pretty good job.

Jon Favreau
What do you guys, we can get to the morning Joe of it all in a second. But what do you guys think about the overall strategy of using his closest supporters as a firewall and dismissing his critics as a bunch of elites.

Jon Lovett
Nothing says I don't care about elite opinion like a phone or at a morning Joe.

Speaker A
You know what I mean?

Jon Lovett
It's basically like a mainline. It's the beltways brain, I think. On the one hand, I'm sympathetic to.

Joe Biden cannot show any daylight on whether or not he's dropping out or it's over. So they're 100% in until they're not. But I do think that a lot of the pushback has been inaccurate, and some of it has felt pretty cynical. The inaccurate part is the idea that only people in Washington care about his age or his ability to do the job for four more years. The polling shows the opposite. This is an issue with every voter in all demographics. Age, race, gender, Democrats, majorities of Democrats in some of these polls have concerns about his age. And sometimes Joe Biden kind of is a bit of a polling truther when he's confronted with this reality and pushes back on polls and sort of cites ones that he says his internals are better, and it's just, it's not accurate. And then the cynical part is the suggestion that it's somehow racist to tell Joe Biden to step down or disrespectful to black voters when, you know, the most likely person to come after him would be Kamala Harris. I find that the cognitive dissonance there to make that argument is hard to wrap your head around.

Jon Favreau
I laughed at first when I read it. Cause I was like, what?

Jon Lovett
I just think also, but, like, what I resent is the attempt to silence the conversation about whether he should drop out by saying, shut up. You could silence us by doing a 1 hour press conference at a bunch of campaign events and knocking the COVID off the ball, and then I'll shut the fuck up. That's how I'll shut up. But, like, the, the idea that people shouldn't have this conversation, given what we all know the stakes are in the selection I find offensive.

Jon Favreau
If I thought that Joe Biden attacking elites, attacking media critics, attacking whatever it is, if I thought that was an effective strategy to beat Donald Trump, I'd be like, go for it, man. Call us whatever the fuck you want. I don't care. Hit us every single event. Make it part of the stump speech.

Speaker A
All the elite, like, it's my kink.

Jon Favreau
It's not. I don't, I don't feel hurt. And who cares? You know? It is. But it's coming from the voters. The concerns are coming from the voters. And look, it's not just post debate either.

I just want to pre debate. Let's talk about where we were before the debate. The polls, right? Before the debate, right? And there was the New York Times Sienna poll. But this was all the polling averages, right?

Think of where we were. Donald Trump was convicted on May 31 for a month. For several weeks straight, we had nonstop coverage of Donald Trump. Donald Trump in courtroom. Donald Trump is a conviction. The Biden campaign is out with tens of millions of dollars of ads in the swing states, mainly on their own. The Trump campaign was not spending in the swing states. So you got the Biden campaign. Joe Biden is out there campaigning. He's campaigning. Donald Trump's a convicted felon. Everyone's talking about it. All the press that everyone that a lot of people are complaining about now, that's not covering Trump. They're all covering Trump for a whole month. And then the polls right before the debate show, and the New York Times poll showed Trump, 48, Biden, 42. They asked, do you think Biden should be replaced as nominee? 64% of all voters said yes. 55% of black voters, 66% of hispanic voters, 48% of Biden voters. People who said they were supporting Biden. And then, do you think Biden's too old to be an effective president? 69% of all voters, 62% of black voters, 68% of hispanic voters, 55% of Biden voters. Now, that's the New York Times poll. Maybe that was an outlier. There are similar numbers in every single poll. And we know from now, from post debate, that the campaign's internal polling, their own polling, even though they think that polling is broken, they do a lot of internal polling, and guess what? They don't think it's broken when you talk to them. Their internal polling had the race closer, but still, like extremely close, if not behind a little bit in the battleground state.

So, like, what?

Speaker A
People are more worried about Joe Biden's unfitness because of age, and they are. Donald Trump's lack of fitness due to his criminality and abuses. That is such a damning fact about where the electorate is, not where the elites are. And this idea, even just like this, is not what they're, is not a strategy to persuade, it's a strategy to embarrass people into silence. That letter was about provoking cowardice. It was about provoking cowardice on the part of house democrats to let them know, don't get out there too far on that tree branch.

We're going to saw it off so as much as you're texting each other and talking to each other and telling reporters anonymously that you're terrified of Joe Biden as the nominee, not just because of what it means for Trump to be president, but because you're afraid of the down ballot impacts for the Senate and the House, as much as your honesty in private is telling you that Joe Biden shouldn't be the nominee, keep your mouth shut. Because. Because I'm not going anywhere and it will only hurt you.

Jon Favreau
I've heard people make two arguments as to why critics should shut up right now. One is it's pointless because Joe Biden is the one making the decision. And Joe Biden has already said he's in it, so why are we wasting our time? And the second is the criticism is hurting him more. It wasn't the debate as much it's the criticism that's hurting the first one. I would say he's still not the nominee yet. He still has not been nominated. He could still make the decision. We are running out of time, for sure. But in the next couple of weeks, he could still make the decision to step down. That decision could be influenced by the people around him. If the people around him are taking the temperature of the voters and swing for again, forget the elites, forget the pundits. Look at the voters, look at the polls. And if people around him on his campaign team see the numbers really drop, or they have real concerns that they're hearing from democratic Senate campaigns, House campaigns, that not only could Joe Biden lose, but those democratic Senate House candidates could lose.

Ro Khanna
Yeah.

Jon Favreau
Then maybe they'll have another conversation with Joe Biden before the convention. So I don't think it is useless. The second one that it's hurting is just so our BSG polling, which is Joel Benninson's polling group, Mike Kuliszek, who is a pollster there, worked with us on wilderness stuff. He did a set of polls before the debate and a set of polls after the debate, and he said that we could share this. So voters who watch the debate, who watch the debate, prefer Trump over Biden, 51 to 46. Voters who did not watch the debate are split, 43% for Biden, 40% for Trump. And voters who just heard about the debate also favor Biden over Trump by 53 45, an even bigger margin. So the idea that it was the criticism and reaction and press narrative after the debate is not borne out by the polling. It was the people who watched the debate in its entirety. Those were the people who moved against Joe Biden, even if it wasn't by a huge margin, but they did.

Speaker A
So the one thing I also, I feel like, I think one reason this has been such a kind of heartbreaking and anxiety provoking experience is that we all feel like two things are happening at once, which is, on the one hand, it's like, this is just Joe Biden's decision. It's entirely up to Joe Biden. Whatever happens is up to Joe Biden. But on the other hand, the feeling.

Jon Lovett
Like we all own it.

Speaker A
We all own it, that's the problem. Yeah. This is that his decision has great effect on all of our lives, and we don't want to feel powerless in this process. And so I do think, by the way, like, members of Congress are going to be important in this, because if a bunch of House Democrats and a bunch of senators start saying that they want Joe Biden to step aside, it'll be harder for Joe Biden to ignore that.

Jon Lovett
That will move him.

Speaker A
So if you think that Joe Biden should not be the nominee and you want your member of Congress to represent you in that fight, you should call them. And by the way, if you think that all of this is insane and that we're doing more harm than good than having this conversation so angry with.

Jon Favreau
Us, then go call, too.

Speaker A
Yeah, but I really, I really think it is like, only Joe Biden can make the decision. Yes, but he's going to make that decision in the world as he finds it. And I think it is incumbent upon all of us to remember that, like, we should act as if we have agency in this fight and remind our members of Congress that they may be right now worried about the fallback if Joe Biden is the nominee. But they should also worry about their voters, who are watching and who care about what happens in this election, and that none of us is going to forget what members of Congress did when all of them are privately ringing their hands and then telling reporters on background that think Joe Biden should step aside while putting out dumb statements that say, Joe Biden had our back, so we gotta have his back, even though you don't believe a word of it.

Jon Favreau
It's a very big coalition, a very broad coalition that defeated Donald Trump in 2020. People who are fans of AOC and Bernie Sanders all the way to Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, that's a big coalition. And all those people want Donald Trump to lose. And defeating Donald Trump is the number one most important priority, and everyone shares that priority. But if that's our number one priority, then we have to be strategic and smart about the best way to do it. You said this on the last pod, which is like, loyalty. What is loyalty? Loyalty is for personal relationships and friendships. Loyalty is not for politics. Loyalty, that's aside loyalty, identity record, it's about who can win. That's it. That's the only thing that matters right now.

Jon Lovett
One thing I just want to say about this morning Joe interview, it was a good idea to have done a week and a half ago.

Jon Favreau
You know what I mean?

Jon Lovett
This is the kind of thing you do to kind of staunch the bleeding among elite opinion. Like the day after a debate that was that bad. And you know what? Joe Biden really, really cares about elite opinion. He watches Morning Joe. He reads Tom Friedman, he reads the New York Times. Nothing stuff matters to him. He doesn't listen to this dumb bullshit that we're doing right now. But that's fine. That's okay. He's 81. But, like, again, on the interview itself, like, it was not like there were times when Biden was, like, reading from talking points and even that part wasn't coming out, like, crisply. You know, Micah said to him, how can you ensure you won't have another night like you had at the debate? And his response was, look at my career. I've not had many nights like that. And it's like, that's not how aging works, you know? So, like, just his proof point is like, watch me. You know, if something underestimated neurologically, you know, I've been out campaigning. Everything's fine. He's barely been campaigning.

Speaker A
Can I also, the second piece of this, which is like, oh, this is causing harm. You're doing harm because Joe Biden's not going to go anywhere. You're doing harm. I think, like, two points about this, because people, people have been really antagonizing the media about this.

You're right. The times, these op ed pages, they are talking about Joe Biden in a way they didn't bother doing about Trump. That is because, a, they treat democrats like protagonists, because they believe that democrats are subject to pressure and have, like, a fundamental respect for democracy and free inquiry. So, yes, you're right. They believe that they will be taken seriously, and b, they believe Joe Biden is decent, that Joe Biden is ultimately guided by decency, that this argument is worth having, that we're having this argument, even if it is ultimately up to Joe Biden. We believe Joe Biden wants to do what's best for the country and that.

Jon Lovett
I don't think it has anything to do. They're doing their job. They're covering a story because mental fitness of the president matters. It is not about decency. It's not about both sideism. Like, I see liberals out there being like, we need to go hard. The fucking media, they should be doing Project 2020. No, this is a story that should be covered.

Speaker A
I'm talking about the op eds calling for him to withdraw when they, the criticism, the idea that, oh, they're writing op eds about Biden withdrawing, but they never called on Donald Trump to withdraw. I'm just, I think that there's a, that like, that the media does focus on democrats and treats democrats like they have agency and responsibility in a way they don't do for republicans. That's all.

Jon Favreau
They fucked up royally in 2016. They kicked Donald's, they have been kicking Donald Trump's ass this cycle.

I mean, it was, we had nonstop coverage of the motorcade leaving Mar a Lago to the core. I mean, what are we talking about? Right? And also, why do we think they're doing this now? Because Joe Biden and his team took the biggest risk they could have possibly taken by asking for a debate in June when they could have waited and done one in the fall or got out of it altogether, maybe. And they took this big risk. And then in front of 15 million people, Joe Biden gave the, the worst debate performance maybe in presidential history. And like, the news media is gonna be like one bad night. Let's move on to Project 2025. That's fucking nuts.

Speaker A
But this is the point, though. Let's say the media did that. Let's say we all shut the fuck up and moved on and stopped talking about did what the fucking Internet Delaware crossers wanted us to do and just get on the boat and shut the fuck up. You think the right wing's going away? Do you think that the tick tock videos of Joe Biden looking too old, that already it had a huge impact, is going away? Do you have any idea what this fucking republican convention is going to be like? Doctors parading in front of it.

Jon Favreau
They've barely spent any money on their ads. They've bare the Trump campaign and the ironc have barely spent their budget.

Speaker A
One of the lessons of the last decade is you don't, the right wing media is going to do what they're going to do. We need to talk about this now, because that's coming regardless of what we say now. Age will be the defining issue if Joe Biden is the nominee. Even if we all fall in line.

Jon Lovett
Which we will do, you're yelling at, like, four Twitter users. Well, no, I'm not, because he's having a nice conversation.

Speaker A
You're right.

Jon Favreau
But one did have a background. Now.

All right.

Speaker A
Unbelievable.

Jon Favreau
One of the frames we obviously keep hearing from Biden is that he's the only candidate who can beat Donald Trump. Of course, the only person who can hold NATO together.

The other most critical part of this election. That's it. One person can hold NATO, by the way.

Speaker A
By the way. The other thing, too, is like, oh, it's somehow you're not being respectful of the voters. When Joe Biden tells Morning Joe and Mika that, who else could do this job? Slap in the face to your vice president.

Jon Favreau
Great segue. That was my next sentence. Great.

So it does. It's so mad. All of this raises some questions about his views and his campaign's views on the very qualified vice president he chose, Kamala Harris. Most democratic officials believe that if Biden does change his mind at this point and step aside, which, again, running out of time, Harris as nominee would be the, the most likely possibility, if not the only possibility. Others have suggested various open convention scenarios. I would suggest Ezra Klein wrote a great piece about Jim Clyburn's sort of one off comments last week. Every once in a while, Clyburn just says something else. That's like a quick comment. You're like, whoa, that was kind of a big deal. At some point, Clyburn said that if, you know, Biden stepped aside, Democrats could hold a, quote, mini primary. James Carville wrote in the New York Times today, he suggested a series of town halls hosted by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, where the two former presidents would apparently also choose the participants and candidates, possibly with the help of the country's democratic governors.

Speaker A
So here's how those, it's like a draft. So basically, those are two hour town halls.

And after Barack Obama and Bill Clinton finished their opening remarks, each candidate will have between two and three minutes to speak. And it'll be an incredible event. It'll be an incredible event. We'll hear about energy policy from Clinton for about 2030 minutes.

Jon Favreau
And there's just a bench. And it's like Whitmer and Shapiro and Kamala Harris and others are sitting there like, is it gonna stop yet? That's all the time we have.

Jon Lovett
All the mini primary proposals would benefit from less detail.

Jon Favreau
Well, and then spell it out less. Here's the best one then. Semaphore reported on a memo floating around from a few Democrats who proposed a, quote, blitz primary that would involve weekly forums moderated by cultural icons like Michelle Obama, Oprah and Taylor Swift.

Jon Lovett
Sure.

Jon Favreau
No bad ideas in a brainstorm, huh?

Speaker A
Guys, Taylor Swift's in Budapest. Getting a shiver. She doesn't really know why. I feel like my name was mentioned in something I don't want to be involved in.

Jon Favreau
It does seem like as of this recording at least, we are quite far from a scenario where Biden steps down. But if he changes his mind, what are your thoughts on the pros and cons of either anointing Harris the nominee or holding some version of an open convention primary that, that does not involve Bill Clinton and Taylor Swift?

Jon Lovett
I mean, I think the mini primary idea is a great one. I realize it could be chaotic, but I also think it would be really interesting and people would tune in and maybe it wouldn't just be like hardcore Democrats that watch the conventions for once. And some people worry that it would get ugly. I kind of doubt that it would. There's not that much time. You're appealing to like 4000 delegates who probably like all the candidates in the mini primary and they will get turned off if you're super mean. It would allow for some vetting of candidates backgrounds in this compressed period of time. Not enough, but hopefully enough to like, expose any real big problems. Is it risky? Yes. But I think that candidates and parties benefit from competition and throwing punches and taking punches. Like, think about Obama. He was a way better candidate after slugging it out with Hillary Clinton for months and months than he was before. And it was a very good thing for us that the Reverend Wright story came out early and not in October before the election.

Speaker A
You're welcome.

Jon Lovett
The elephant in the room is obviously the vice president and sort of like what she is owed in this moment as next up, if Biden were to resign as president. But I think for her, the optics of competing and winning the nomination is really good. Even in a weird ad hoc process. It's better than the party seeming to dictate an outcome. I don't think people like that.

Jon Favreau
I worry a lot about it seeming like the party dictates an outcome, especially after the party's nominee steps aside because of, you know, and then there's all these stories out there and has anyone been hiding age stuff? So already people are gonna start feeling distrustful. Right. And if you then, and I think this is about Kamala Harris. I think this, if someone came out and said, here's our governor Whitmer Josh Shapiro ticket, it's here for you and we're giving it to you. Right. I'd feel the same way. Like, I don't think at this point that the party itself, senior leaders, can just come out and say, here is the person. I think that Kamala Harris would be the overwhelming favorite in this scenario, but I think she would emerge as a stronger candidate in the general if, like Tommy said, there are a series of town halls, interviews, debates with some of the other potential candidates. And I think that that would also sort of blunt a very easy line of attack from Trump and the Republicans that, like, the cabal got together that was propping up Joe Biden. And then they just gave us this person and, like, you know what, again, debating makes you stronger. And the whole, everyone just assumes the chaos and division. If this happens, if Joe Biden steps aside, the Democratic Party will have taken the biggest gamble ever this close to the election, where the stakes are total. And I think once a nominee is chosen, talk about people getting in line. Everyone is going to be, like, on their best behavior.

There are a very few ideological fissures and the potential candidates that we could. That we could see at this point, we're not going to have, like, ideological divisions like we've had in the past. It's all, people are going to be like, I'm on board. You're already seeing, like, the Bernie Bros and the k hive and the never trumpers all get together. You know, it's just, it's, it's already.

Speaker A
And it's. And honestly, it's beautiful.

Jon Favreau
It's beautiful. Think about dumb.

Jon Lovett
The ideological divisions of 2020 were. It was like, how fast are we going to implement Medicare for all? And what fantasy reality really fighting about that?

Jon Favreau
And those kind of conversations are never going to happen.

Speaker A
So, yeah, I do think that, like, obviously, like, the best way Kamala Harris could be the nominee is to be the nominee after some kind of an open process. I am not like, I think what you're saying makes sense, but if you told me that the way this shakes out is that the Monday after the republican convention, Joe Biden calls a press conference and says, I've decided to step aside and I'm throwing my support behind my vice president, I always said I would pass the torch. Voters across the country voted for our ticket. I'm gonna respect the will of the voters.

Jon Favreau
I'd be fine with that.

Speaker A
I would be 100% fine with it. And by the way, like, it isn't people in a background choosing because the democratic primaries unfolded and she was gonna be on the ticket. So it's like, and there's an argument made that, too like, the money goes to her. So like that, the kind of, she is the vice president. It is, it is, it is rightful that given the fact that there can't be a primary, the primary already took place and selected her as the backup. And if that is the way it goes, I will be completely happy with that. I am not persuaded that the risk of the mess that could happen in the weeks before the convention is better than that moment, which I think will be just as interesting and exciting to the press for the three weeks before we get to the convention.

Jon Favreau
I just start with the same principle that we're applying to this whole conversation about Biden. Right. Which is winning is all that matters right now. Beating Donald Trump. Trump is the only thing that matters. And we have to put forward the candidate in the Democratic Party who has the very best chance of beating Donald Trump. Are we going to know who that candidate is with certainty? Absolutely not. You can never know for certain. You're never going to have the data that gives certainty. But data can help. Polling can help. Interviews can help. Debates can help like that, can give delegates information that they wouldn't otherwise have. And I do think it would help to make at least an educated guess about what's going to happen.

Speaker A
I'm not saying this with any confidence whatsoever.

My concern with this whole idea is it may not be possible in that short span of time to get an amount of information big enough. Basically, what we're trying to figure out is, what are your liabilities?

Are you Rjeb Bush? Are you our Ron Desantis? Are you are Wes Clark? Whatever. And given that, I don't know that four weeks is enough time to get that. And Kamala Harris, like, you know, there are goofy clips of Kamala Harris. Like, we kind of know Kamala Harris's liabilities right now. We could think through what those are. She has been vetted on the national stage. She's been attacked on the national stage. We know what they'll try with her. We know what they've said. So I, like, I am. I am.

Jon Lovett
The counterpoint to that is that her 2020 race went very badly.

Speaker A
Yeah, yeah.

Jon Lovett
You know, so, I mean, I'm not. I look, again, I would be thrilled if she were the nominee. I'm just saying, like, we should talk about the downside. Like, her polling is not great. Her disapproval is at 51% in the 538 average.

You know, there's, you talk to people who do a lot of focus groups. They say swing voters don't like Joe Biden, and they also don't like her. She might get tagged with some of the policy, Gaza, immigration, inflation. She could get pulled into recriminations about whether it's, she knew of this, you know, allegations of an effort to cover up about Joe Biden's age. I'm saying, like, there are downside risks. I agree. She is the most vetted because she has been the vice president. There's also benefits, which is a lot of smart people think that she would be able to use all of the Biden campaign's money and infrastructure. I don't totally get how the campaign finance system works, but it sounds like it would be more plug and play.

Women in black voters are the base of the Democratic Party. The hope would be that she would energize those voters. She's been very effective prosecuting the case on abortion and the Dobbs opinion. So there's a lot of upsides to Kamala.

Jon Favreau
And also she starts as the front runner in this process. And I think that in some ways that gives her a clean slate to say, yeah, you know, you saw these clips last couple years, whatever. I'm gonna prosecute the case against Donald Trump. She was at the essence fest. She was great. She was great in a very tough situation the night after the debate, in those interviews. Right. We saw her at moments in the 2020 campaign, which, you're right, did not go well on the debate stage where she gave it to Joe Biden. Pretty good.

She definitely has the capacity, like I said, I think it would benefit her to go through the show.

Speaker A
Yeah, I think that we were all so shell shocked from the debate itself that I feel like we saw her interview with, I can't remember, CNN or MSNBC. I think she did both right after. It was hard to see it outside of the context of Joe Biden, but going back and watching a clip of her talking about abortion and trying to make the case about Donald Trump, it was excellent. One other just point about this, too, is look, again, an open process may be the best thing I actually could be. I probably have a different opinion tomorrow. But also, like, you know, every day Joe Biden's out there, he's being like, no, no, I'm telling you, I still got my fastball. We're like, throw it. He's like, I'll throw it tomorrow. He's like, no, no, I'm still on my fastball. You'll see. You'll see. And it's like another couple weeks of Democrats talking amongst ourselves instead of one person out there day after day after day articulating the case against Donald Trump, which, as Adam Schiff pointed out, is excellent.

Jon Favreau
Yeah.

Jon Lovett
90% of the mini primary, though, it would be like 90% attacks on Trump, 10% about yourself and your bio and what you do.

Jon Favreau
That's true.

Speaker A
That's true.

Jon Lovett
By the way, Hakeem Jeffries and AOC both are coming out in support of Biden, as we've been recording this.

Jon Favreau
So interesting.

Jon Lovett
See where the party's going.

Speaker A
Are they Biden is the nominee statements, or are they full throated? You know what I mean? There's like, these categories of statements now.

Jon Lovett
There's the, like, Hakeem Jeffrey says, I support President Biden in the democratic ticket. My position has not changed.

AOC is, he's a nominee. I'm making sure that I support him, and I'm focused on making sure that we win in November.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, those are still in the.

I don't know, it's tough, some of these statements. I think everyone's just trying to figure it out. Well, we're gonna find out more about what's going on in Congress, because right after this, Lovett is gonna talk to California Congressman Ro Khanna. But before we do get to that conversation, guess what, guys?

Speaker A
What?

Jon Favreau
Democracy, or else, is officially number one on the New York Times bestseller list, which means all of you who bought the book and helped it get there also contributed to vote Save America. That's a lot of money to vote Save America. And that means that a lot of campaigns, grassroots organizations that are going to help elect democrats up and down the ticket and register voters in 2024 are going to get more money. So good for you guys.

Speaker A
And even more importantly, for the rest of our lives, we get to say we're number one New York Times bestsellers.

I know you are. I saw you try to get steer around it, whatever.

Jon Lovett
Thank you for enduring these housekeeping updates. If you didn't buy the book, if you did, thanks for buying the book as well.

Jon Favreau
Also, good news, guys. The Democracy Rails tour is headed to the Orpheum Theater in Madison, Wisconsin on Friday, July 19, day after Trump's speech at the republican convention. We'll probably have some stuff to talk about. And on the 20th, love it or leave it will also be in Madison at the Barrymore Theater. It's been great to see all you out there these last couple weeks. You've been fantastic. The Boston show is like one of my favorite shows, especially for like a bleak day after the debate. It was one of the most fun shows.

Speaker A
It was really, we were exhausted. We had watched the debate the night before. And it really was one of the best live shows we've ever done. And I think it was nice being with everybody when the news was so bleak because all we could do was gallows humor. It was nice.

Jon Favreau
Head to crooked.com friends to grab tickets. And when we come back, Ro Khanna.

Jon Lovett
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Speaker A
So, yeah, no, I turn on my phone and the first thing I see is a message from you telling me that Trump was convicted. By the way, you like, whoever's sending texts for you has, like, hacked the mainframe. And I'm just gonna tell you, I'm report. You've been reported as junk from so many different numbers, and you're still in my fucking inbox. I don't know what to do. I can't get rid of you. I am glad I had a chance to bring this up.

So many texts, it's unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. Laugh all you want.

Well, it's good to see you, congressman. Thank you for taking the time.

Ro Khanna
Good to see you.

Speaker A
I think we can jump in. Are we good? All right, if you're ready, I'm ready. Joining us now needs no introduction. It's Congressman Ro Khanna. Thank you so much for making the time. There's a lot happening, and it'd be very helpful to have your perspective. So after Joe Biden's debate performance, you posted, Rocky wasn't the most eloquent in speech, but he was a fighter. His character conveyed his eloquence. Our message. Biden's character is his eloquence. And you know that Rocky gets beaten half to death and loses, right?

Ro Khanna
I do. I grew up outside Philadelphia, so I watched too many rocky movies.

The creed ones are even better.

Speaker A
So, jokes aside, I'm curious what your reaction was to the George Stephanopoulos interview. But when the american people are very clearly concerned, in part because of how Joe Biden is unable to convey his message.

If your character is your eloquence, how do you dissuade people of their concerns about Joe Biden's age?

Ro Khanna
Well, first of all, you acknowledge that the concerns are valid.

You don't go on calling people bed wetters for raising concerns that many Americans feel. And by the way, it's not just rich donors, it's activists. It's grassroots folks. It's ordinary people in coffee shops idea that we're going to attack our own supporters is not effective. The other thing you don't do is go to war with the press. I mean, Napoleon once said that four hostile newspapers were a bigger threat than 1000 people with bayonets.

And I know John recently has been complimentary to the Biden campaign team, but whoever made the decision to go to war with the New York Times is malpractice, should be fired. I mean, who goes to war with the New York Times? Go do an interview. Who goes to war with the Washington Post? Like, have the humility to engage the press. Don't go to war with the pod save guys either. Not a smart strategy. So all of this, I think, is a correction that the Biden campaign needs, which is to say, let's have an honest conversation. I understand it. I am not as articulate as I used to be. I have diminished in certain ways as anyone would when you're aging, but I still have the values, I still have the judgment. I have the wisdom, and this is why I'm running. And let's make the contrast to Donald Trump.

Speaker A
So President Biden sent a letter to you and your colleagues today basically explaining his position.

In that letter, he says, any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us. It's time to come together and move forward as a unified party.

Now, I saw that you posted the comments from former attorney general Eric Holder, who said that it's actually appropriate for Democrats to be having this discussion. So I take it, based on what you're saying here and what you said there, that you disagree with that part of the letter.

Ro Khanna
I disagree with the tone, and I do think it's important to unify. But you don't unify by suppressing conversation. You don't unify by suppressing dissent. You unify by acknowledging people's concerns, being vulnerable, and acknowledging the truth, and then offering a way forward. It's your job to inspire unity, not to demand it. And when you look at great leaders in our history, whether that's Abraham Lincoln through the force argument or Barack Obama, they didn't say, oh, come on, unify around me because I'm the nominee. They said, let me persuade you. Let me inspire you to unify. And so I don't think actually it's going to unify the party by being over the top in demanding something.

Speaker A
Did you see the George Stephanopoulos interview?

Ro Khanna
I did.

Speaker A
And you think that that performance is one that would help Joe Biden assuage people's concerns?

Ro Khanna
I thought the morning Joe interview was better towards, towards that. I thought the Stephanopoulos interview, he didn't have any clear flubs, but I also thought there were answers that weren't that great that people have talked about. I mean, saying that I, you know, I'll just give it my try and I'll be okay.

I know what he was trying to get at. You know, you do your duty. We can't control larger things in life. But it came off as he wasn't fully in the fight. There were other answers that were meandering, and so it wasn't one of his best interviews, but I don't think that it was disqualifying that interview, and I think he's got to do more of it.

Speaker A
Have you talked to Joe Biden directly since the debate? Have you heard from him about what happened?

Ro Khanna
I have not. I have not tried to reach him. And I came out pretty early on saying that it's his decision.

One part I did agree with on the letter is he won the votes. We have a process. We have a primary process.

He is the nominee unless he says otherwise. And I made that pretty clear to senior people around him. So he's got there 218 people in our house caucus. There are other calls probably worth his time.

Speaker A
You're not the problem right now. So, you know, you, I have to say, I've been quoting you for a long time because of something you actually told me on, on love it or leave it about a year ago.

Can we play that clip, please?

Ro Khanna
So, yes, President Biden is old, like no one is going to. You can't have anyone assume the presidency, even democratic politicians. We've had and not have something that you could say, well, I wish, I wish he was 65. Sure. I wish he was 65. But look at what he has achieved.

He has extraordinary experience. He has done a lot. He can win in the midwest, and I think he deserves a second term.

By the way, you know, all this polling, someone said, oh, there's a poll showing Nikki Hilly up. You know, we didn't have President Dukakis. We didn't have President Gary Hart. Like, the polling right now is kind of irrelevant.

He has the humility to know that the party changed. He listened to young people. He listened to Bernie. He listened to AOC. He listened to Elizabeth Warren. He listened to the moderates, too. But he went where the median of the country was. And that takes a lot of, actually, wisdom to say, look, I'm not going to be the same person. I'm going to listen to where the country's moving.

Speaker A
So I wanted to play that for two reasons.

One, you made the point that age was Joe Biden's biggest liability, and we know it. We know that is his biggest liability, and it's, every candidate would have one. And the second was that one of Joe Biden's great strengths was that he knew how to listen and he knew how to learn and change. And that was a really impressive part about his presidency.

At what point do we decide based on the polling, at what point does Joe Biden decide based on what he's hearing, that the time has come to listen to the people, the majority of voters, almost the full majority of Democrats now, almost majority of Democrats now that think he should step aside. At what point does Joe Biden need to show that kind of humility that made him such a good president in his first term?

Ro Khanna
A couple points. First, he should not deny the polls. I mean, arguing that the New York Times poll or other polls are wrong and he's actually up, I think you should just acknowledge these four points, five points down, and say, look, there are other candidates who have been down, and I'm going to come back. I mean, that's not an insurmountable margin, but denying the polls is not a great, look, the question about whether to run is such a deeply personal decision for someone who's been the nominee, who's gotten millions of votes, and that's a decision he and his family and his close friends will make. I think he owes people the ability, the opportunity to listen in terms of his platform, in terms of what he's going to do, in terms of listening to their concerns about what he needs to do to win the race. But I don't know if you can expect someone who's won the votes to say, ok, now that the polling shows that the majority are opposed to you running, that I'm just going to give up. I think that's asking too much of listening.

Speaker A
Yeah. I don't know. I just. Do you really think that if the voters of the Democratic Party saw that Joe Biden, we saw at that debate that he would be the nominee right now? Do you believe right now that the democratic voters who voted in basically an unapologetic speaker?

Ro Khanna
No, I don't.

Speaker A
They won't. You don't. If they saw the Joe Biden at that debate, Joe Biden would not be the nominee. Do you agree with that?

Ro Khanna
I agree with that. And I agree with that.

Speaker A
But, and so we're bound, we're bound to what happened before.

Like, let's say Joe Biden, he's not. Nothing has gone terribly wrong with his health. Let's hope that that's the case. But he's had an inexorable march of time. The inexorable effects of age have now come to a point where people have these deep concerns that are far worse than they were two years ago. We are bound to what happened in basically an unopposed primary, even though the voters today have given another chance, would want something else.

Ro Khanna
I think that the question is that you're going without any contests, without any polling. I mean, if it was something that was clearly, obviously disqualifying, and I guess my point of view here is that you have reasonable arguments on both sides. I don't think this is clear cut. Like, I don't think Joe Biden went and committed some criminal act where on our side it would be clear cut. On the other side, it's nothing. I don't think this is a case where, God forbid, Joe Biden had a stroke that was incapacitating and where he couldn't recover. I think this is a case where you have a large chunk of the party that still believes that Joe Biden, because of the incumbency advantage, because of his connection with african american voters, with the Midwest, because of his record, has a very good chance to win and is one of the best chances to win. Now, we can debate whether that's 30%, 25%, 40%, and what the other side is, but you can't, I don't think, on that ambiguous a record, you can say, okay, you know, you just need to quit the race. I think what you could say is, please consider this very seriously. Please talk to your friends, your family, please consult outside folks. But ultimately, I think this is still a, a judgment that Biden himself has to make.

Yeah, I think he would do himself favors to recognize the ambiguity of it and that it's not a clear cut, clear cut decision. By the way, if it was a clear cut decision, you would have people like Barack Obama and others coming out and saying that he shouldn't run. So I think that the fact that you've had so many people that the party respects being ambiguous about it suggests that there's real ambiguity.

Speaker A
Does that, is that what that suggests? I mean, tell me if this is wrong, that behind the scenes, members of Congress, even members of Congress that are currently saying, joe Biden is my candidate and he had our back, so I have his back.

They're full of shit.

Jon Lovett
Right?

Speaker A
Behind the scenes, they're terrified and think he's going to lose. Is that right?

Ro Khanna
Not all of them, honestly. But some of them, I'd say quite a few of them. Quite a few of them think that. But there are two camps. Some of them may think that and think it's still a bad look to take away the democratic choice from a candidate who's won the primaries. I get that they were unopposed, but one of the reasons they were unopposed, it's not like some committee said, don't run. It's that candidates at the time looked at Joe Biden's poll numbers and said he couldn't be beaten in a democratic primary. And I think they were right. I don't think that Joe Biden of a year and a half ago would have been beaten in a democratic primary. And so there's a process, and some people are reluctant to undermine that process. Some folks genuinely think that he has a better chance than someone who had just come up for four months in a presidential campaign untested against a huge brand name.

It's unclear to me that two of the great democratic presidents, I disagree with some of their policies on some things, but I don't think either Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, thrust into a general election campaign four months before a general election, would necessarily have won. I mean, I. Maybe they would have. I mean, maybe they would have given some great speech and done it, but it's not an easy thing.

Speaker A
Yeah, but if it were, if Joe Biden decides not to run and he goes and throws his support behind Kamala Harris, I have every confidence that you personally will be one of the best and smartest advocates for Kamala Harris, making the absolute best case for why she could win a right.

Ro Khanna
And I think she's absolutely qualified to be president. I think she is very warm in person, having just met her a couple of weeks ago, she was asking about my family. She's much more charming than the media gives her credit for. I would unambiguously, 1000% support her, and I think she would have a reasonable chance to win. I don't think that judgment is something that President Biden and Kamala Harris together earned the right to make. And I think they.

I guess my view is. Let me ask, put the question back to you. Do you think Biden is, why do you think he's staying in? I mean, do you think he doesn't think that he's the best candidate to beat Donald Trump, which is what he says?

Speaker A
I don't know. I don't know. I think that there's something a little bit insulting towards Kamala Harris when he says to morning Joe, who else could do this? Who else could hold NATO together? I think it's insulting to the many other Democrats waiting in the wings who you would be an incredible advocate for. We would be advocating for and knocking on doors full throatedly, full heartedly if they were the nominee.

I don't know Joe Biden's psychology right now. I don't know what it's like to, you know, he said to George Stephanopoulos, I didn't, did you watch the debate again? He said, I don't think I did, which was a perplexing answer. I don't know what it's like to be 81 years old when you're not president, when you are president, when the stakes feel so high. But it's not really about him. Like, I don't, you know, I feel like it's incumbent upon all of us to advocate for what we think is going to put us in the best position to defeat Donald Trump. If that's Joe Biden, then he has to put these stories to rest. If Joe Biden called you and said, what do you think I should do, roe, would you tell him to stay in the race?

Ro Khanna
I would say, first of all, mister president, it's your decision. But I would say, I think one of your most endearing qualities is your humility. I think some of your recent interviews where you're attacking your own supporters, where you're calling anyone who questions you as an elite, where you're stifling dissent within the party, is not a good, look, I understand that you believe, and you have been a great president. And probably anyone who runs for president believes they're a person of destiny and only they can do it. But that also, I think, undermines your brand as someone who's a humble public servant. And I would say you need to show the american people you don't need this. You don't need another term for the presidency. Why do you need it at 81? But you're doing this because you deeply believe that you have, as the incumbent and given your economic record and given your ability to win over people in deindustrialized parts of the country, the ability to win this race against Donald Trump. And I would talk about, instead of attacking your supporters on Morning Joe, I would say, you know, Joe Scarborough, you know what came out today? That of the de industrialized counties in America that Donald Trump said he was going to turn around, we actually did. For the past three years. We've had more job creation there than we've had in the past 20 years. This is what I want to continue doing. And I'd focus on that. And I'd say, mister President, get out there. If you want to run, get out there.

And don't, you know, if you make mistakes, people understand that. But you got to look like you're fighting and trying and doing everything you can and do the editorial board interviews, do the town halls. That's, that's what I'd say.

Speaker A
And then he says, and I'm sorry to keep putting on the spot. Then he says, wow, that means a lot to me. That means the world to me. But I'm just honestly not sure I'm the right person. Would you write, do you think it should be me, or do you think I should step aside and pass the torch to my vice president like I said I would do when I first ran?

Ro Khanna
Well, if he said that, I would tell him to pass the torch, but I don't think he'll say that. And the reason I would tell him to pass the torch is even when you run for Congress, if you don't think you're the right person and you're having self doubts, you're not going to win the race. So if someone was saying, I'm thinking of running for president, or, and I'm not sure, you know, I'd say, yeah, probably you shouldn't run. I mean, you've got to have a conviction of steel.

Speaker A
This guy's good. This guy's good. That was a good answer.

Ro Khanna
Just stepping back a bit.

When I, when many of us worked for Barack Obama in 2008, we thought after Obama, there would be a generation of people like Hakeem Jeffries, that there were going to be young, new generation leaders, that this was the, this new era that was being ushered in. And in that sense, at least, I, and many were wrong. I mean, after that, we had Hillary Clinton and then would respect great public servant, but that wasn't going to sort of forward in terms of a generational change. And then we had Joe Biden. And I think we have to ask why. And part of the reason is that this country is grappling with something very difficult. We're becoming a cohesive, multiracial democracy. There's a lot of change. Technology, economics. People want the familiar. They want also what is understandable. And we got two old guys arguing about their golf handicaps, and half the country thinks they're totally out of touch. But some of the country thinks, I understand, and these folks are familiar, and that's the debate we're having as a country. But at some point, we're going to have generational change. But I guess what I would say is let's have this debate in an open way.

But it's not a cop out when I'm saying I don't think there's an obvious truth, clear answer on either side.

And I criticize the president's team and him for squelching the dissent. But I also think people are like, well, Biden obviously can't win. Let's remove him.

I think that also is, that's a point of view, but I don't think it's okay. This is clearly obvious that that should be the case.

Speaker A
And, and right now, you don't have a preference between those two.

You, you, right now, you sitting there, you're not sure if Joe Biden should or shouldn't step aside.

You don't have a preference.

Ro Khanna
Speaker one, me, my, my view, no, I do have a preference. I mean, my view would be first that he has earned the right to make the decision, and I trust him to make that decision with sufficient input. But I would be on the side that he can stay in. And we need a strong economic contrast message that we should be bold in the contrast with Donald Trump and have everyone around the country be a surrogate for making that message. Have people talking about project 2025, have people talking about Trump's hollowing out the working class, have us focus on a few key, bold economic policies. And I think the president can win. Now, do I think he's the underdog? Yes. Do I think that absent Michelle Obama coming in, that someone else, whether it's a Kamala Harris or a Whitmer or a Newsom or a Shapiro, would start out with significantly higher odds than Joe Biden? I don't, this is my own view. And so I guess if I could be convinced that you told me Michelle Obama is running and we all had a, then I'd say, yeah, of course it's a no brainer. But I don't think that the alternative, I don't think that the alternative is worse. I certainly think Kamala Harris could win. I think Whitmer could win. Gavin could win. I mean, but I don't think it's significantly better if Joe Biden runs a good campaign, and I think we're capable of running a good campaign.

Speaker A
You're saying you don't believe someone like Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Raphael Warnock, Kamala Harris, you don't believe that their ability to just be out there day after day from 07:00 a.m. to 09:00 p.m. day after day. You don't think that that is enough to overcome the liability of starting with someone new, and you don't think that's enough to overcome the age liability that Joe Biden brings. That's what I don't understand.

Ro Khanna
I think they'd be better messengers than Joe Biden. All of the names that you mentioned, I think some would be spectacularly better as messengers. I don't think being a messenger is all that it takes to be president, United States. I think there is a deep authenticity. There's a trust you have to establish with the american people. You have to convey why you're doing it, what your vision is. And it's unclear to me that any of those folks untested in four months would be able to do it. I'm not saying they couldn't. But there's a reason that we had. Look, unknown candidates or relatively unknown candidates can win. People like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, but they take two years to earn that trust. They don't just come in with four months. And there's almost something. I think maybe people say, we want the fresh, or maybe people will say, well, this Donald Trump guy, he's overcome convictions for two years, and he's been at it and he's been fighting, and he's. And now we're just going to hand the presidency to someone who's campaigned for three months? I don't know. I mean, I don't know how it would cut whether people think you got to earn people's votes. I realized that when I ran for Congress. I lost the first time, two years, and then I won 60 40 the next time. A lot of people said, you stuck with it.

We liked your grit. We liked the fact that you were willing to earn that vote. And I guess I don't know anyone who's come out of nowhere and won without that slog and without really earning it over a long primary process.

Speaker A
What a time to be alive, I think.

Ro Khanna
Look, I am hopeful about this time.

And the reason I'm hopeful is because I view it as we're on the cusp of doing something incredible in this country. You look at the freshman class at Congress, you look at people like Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost. You look at the fact that now, I mean, I'm biased because I'm indian american, but you've got six indian Americans in Congress, John. When I was growing up, you couldn't meet my family, couldn't meet a staff member to a member of Congress. It's like we're growing more diverse. We're growing in spite of ourselves. We're becoming this cohesive, multiracial democracy. And so if we have a moment of generation saying, you know, we want to go for the familiar, we're still unsure, you know, that we've got to win. But I am so hopeful about the next generation in this country. And I believe that what Biden should have said is, if for some chance Donald Trump wins, I'm going to be the first one to continue the fight. I mean, Donald Trump, the one thing that drives me crazy, and I, look, I understand Donald Trump, this threat to american institutions, project 2025, voting rights, women's rights. But the one thing that drives me crazy is when we just sort of say, oh, Donald Trump wins. That's the end of american democracy. Give me a break. You think Abraham Lincoln thought like that? FDR thought like that. John Lewis thought like that. We're not going to lose democracy to a buffoonish billionaire. We have to have the conviction and the fight to continue to fight for what this country is going to be.

Speaker A
Well, you know, we also could have an indian american president, you know, if you, if we play our cards right. Right. It's, it's sitting right there.

Ro Khanna
I mean, you know, only if my texting program continues to annoy you. Well, that, that's the key to this. Well, yes.

Speaker A
Listen, you, you're, you know, obviously indian.

Ro Khanna
American conspiracy we control. We have so many people in tech, at Google and the tech.

Speaker A
Well, and the vice presidency. And the vice presidency.

Congressman Khanna, thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks you for taking these questions. I think a lot of people feel a little bit, this has been a very, I think, upsetting. They understand the stakes. They are scared, and they feel both that this is on somehow Joe Biden's decision, but also collectively, a decision that should belong to all of us. What do you say to people listening that are wondering what they should be doing right now? Do you think that if somebody believes Joe Biden should be the nominee or shouldn't be the nominee, that they should be calling their members of Congress? How do you think people should be responding to this rather than just being on their phones and they want to feel like they have agency?

Ro Khanna
First of all, I say that I hear you, and I think you're absolutely right. And where I think our party has failed is by making people feel unheard, making it feel like it's either you get behind the president or somehow you're not loyal or somehow you're not a good Democrat or somehow you're engaged in bedwetting or a circular firing spot. Where our party has failed is trying to deny the obvious. What people saw or trying to pretend like Joe Biden is something that he's not. And I think we have to welcome the conversation. We need to say it's very legitimate. And I don't think, okay, we're having this conversation three, four weeks. I don't think that's like, okay, we can win. I think it's better that we air it out.

I have full confidence, John, whether it's you or whoever is saying that we should have a different nominee of Joe Biden is the nominee come August that we'll all rally around him. And I don't think there's any problem having a conversation in the meantime. And I would encourage people to talk to their members of Congress, to be a voice on social media, to talk to people you may know at the White House and to have your view.

I will say that if I did have an opportunity to talk to the president, the biggest thing I would say is, mister president, politics is ultimately about persuasion. Let's be in the business of persuasion. Let's not just be employing the tactics of criticizing the media and calling people elites and rallying our base.

That's not the best of democratic politics.

Speaker A
Congressman Rokhana, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Hope to talk to you soon.

Ro Khanna
Thank you.

Jon Favreau
Okay, before we go, we figured we should talk about the other guy in the race, Donald Trump.

He must resign. He should step down.

Speaker A
Absolutely.

Jon Favreau
Just want to get on the record. He's been doing his best to stay out of the spotlight and let the democratic inviting consume news cycle after news cycle. Though apparently his discipline only goes so far because tonight he's going on Hannity. That should be fun. A few things have happened in Trump world even without the candidate being out there. The republican convention is next week. On Monday, apparently team Trump's urging, the RNC platform committee voted to remove a call for national limits on abortion. According to Politico, the final ratified platform is basically just one page of vague statements seemingly recycled from Trump's dump speech, like seal the border, stop migrant invasion, carry out the largest deportation in american history. End inflation is one, just end inflation. That's it. And then my favorite one was unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success. That's like a, that went through the, just went through the whole, that, that was a plank. That's a plank on the platform.

Speaker A
What kind of process do you think this thing would be?

Jon Favreau
This comes after Trump decided, seemingly out of the blue, to distance himself from project 2025 in a post on truth social that reads, I know nothing about project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they're saying, and some of the things they are saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.

He knows nothing. The things that they're saying are bad, but he knows nothing.

Speaker A
I don't know anything about it. I also hate it.

Jon Lovett
But good luck.

Speaker A
And what parts? The parts you hate.

Jon Favreau
I have no idea who's behind it, even though 16 of my former administration officials are behind it.

Speaker A
Yes, I know everybody's been sharing the hot dog meme, all right? But this is really more of a. I can't believe there's gambling in this casino situation.

Jon Favreau
Honestly, it seems like they've realized that project 2025 is getting a lot of attention and that it is terrifyingly unpopular. How do you think the Democrats should handle this? First of all, we get a vague, watered down convention platform and Trump trying to distance himself.

Speaker A
So I was actually noticing before Trump put out this statement that we were starting to hear about project 2025 from non political sources. Like Taraji mentioned it at an award show, like, love it or leave it.

Jon Favreau
Caught on TikTok.

Speaker A
Love it or leave it. Guests have been bringing it up and what I. That, like, comedians have been bringing it up, like, they're worried about, hey, you don't know about this. This thing. Project 2025. Project 2025. And I think we finally have what the right normally has, which is they have a secret conspiracy.

Jon Lovett
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A
Fucking awesome. They have a secret plan to destroy the country. All these powerful figures have a secret plan, and they're all working on it at their conferences.

These powerful elites, a kind of illuminati that's gathering in the dead of night in smoke filled rooms to come up with a plan to destroy the country. And it's real.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, it is real. And I think that, like, look, Trump's gonna try to walk away because he's got advisors being like, hey, man, you're on the path to victory here. Just. And everyone's like, Trump hasn't. Why hasn't the media been talking about how Trump's been out of the spotlight for ten days?

Jon Lovett
He's been hitting balls.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, of course he's out of the spotlight for ten days.

Jon Lovett
He's smart.

Speaker A
Every time he finishes a round of golf. His poll numbers improve.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. Either he's gut smart, he's become smart, or, you know, they got him in a cage somewhere.

They're just, they got like a shot collar on him. I don't think he tries to, like.

Jon Lovett
He'S got decent political instincts. He was watching this car trek and he couldn't park.

Speaker A
I believe his luck in that debate stepped back. He's hanging out.

Jon Favreau
And I think that's why they want to walk away. Even though project 2025, Stephen Miller part of it. His Trump's current press secretary. She's in a video for ads for him. Russ Vogt is like the architect. He was the head of OMB, the Office of Management and Budget under Trump. Could be the next chief of staff. Like, give me a fucking break.

Speaker A
It's the Trump plan. It's the Trump plan.

This is what they will implement. The people that wrote this, all the advisers, will be staffed throughout the administration. This is Trump's denials are meaningless. This is their plan for next. We should just be moving forward under the correct assumption that this is their plan for 2025.

Jon Favreau
And it is definitely moving beyond the junkies to the normies.

A friend who doesn't follow politics at all, really, and doesn't text me and be like, dude, have you heard about this 2025 thing? They're trying to ban porn.

It's like, oh, now you're involved in the election? Now we're paying attention.

Speaker A
It's the fucking, it is the porn.

Jon Favreau
It's the whole bar stool audience.

Speaker A
The bro, the Joe Rogan, the porn.

Jon Favreau
He's like, what the, he's like, I think that Biden's kind of old, but like, the porn, it's gonna be. So anyway, project 2025, you know who should talk about it more?

Jon Lovett
Joe Biden.

Jon Favreau
Joe Biden. Alright, thanks to Rokhana for joining us today. We will be back with a show on Wednesday afternoon. We'll talk to you then.

If you want to get ad free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our friends of the Pod subscription community@crooked.com. friends. And if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. Plus, if you as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producers are Sol Rubin and Farah Safari. Reed Churlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis writing support by Hallie Kiefer. Madeline Herringer is our head of news, and Matt de Grote is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hayley Jones, Mia Kellman, David Toles, Kirill Pallaviv, and Molly Lobel.

Jon Lovett
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Biden Digs In

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1. Introduction

2. Analyzing Biden's Interview

3. Campaign Strategies

4. Public and Media Perception

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